Monday, 4 October 2010

Self Portraits

Here's some self portraits i've had a go at. The first one is from a picture of myself and the second is from looking in the mirror and drawing myself. The picture is 1-2 years old :/ but i thought id still just try it.

4 comments:

hey sean, I spent a couple hours having a look for you but I have to agree with you.... theres really not alot in the way of Bald Eagle Skeletons. i dont know if these links would be any use but they are all i could come up with, sorryhttp://www.peregrinefund.org/lead_conference/PDF/0119%20Neumann.pdfhttp://tdn.com/news/local/article_1da291b2-5c7d-11df-92f0-001cc4c03286.htmlhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/olatheanimalhospital/4977542365/lightbox/http://www.soarraptors.org/leadresearch.htmlhttp://gallery.usgs.gov/photos/155http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=Bald%20eagle%20x%20ray&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1405&bih=780Just don't draw the bullets :)

I noticed that you’d commented on Nat’s frog skeleton/human skeleton sequence. I’m pleased you picked up on it, because in light of your own hybrid development so far, I would have encouraged you to follow her example. I like the variety of approaches you’ve posted so far in your ongoing attempt to depict your gene-spliced self – from cartoony to fantasy, but I have been suggesting that students consider working from the ‘inside’ out – i.e., by studying closely the anatomical structures of their animals, and using that knowledge to skew and re-engineer the human skeleton. For instance, you’ve drawn some good self-portraits; consider scanning one of them in, and gradually working over/into it with shapes and contours of the eagle skull; work gradually and try and avoid ‘cliched thinking’. For instance, Cronenberg’s fly-splice was neither man or insect, but something new; just because you’ve been spliced with a winged creature, does it automatically follow that you’d have fully grown, fully functioning wings? Perhaps you might consider producing a series of drawings depicting your metamorphosis from ‘all man’ to ‘all eagle’, but select drawings from the middle of the process to develop further? Remember too, that this is a ‘self-portait’, not simply a creature or character design, so bear in mind that somekind of likeness or semblance or humanity is important to maintain. Consider working in a subtle way – don’t go for the obvious traits – work out your logic. For instance, Jono’s worked out that, since a fish’s guts are held in place by the water it swims in, once out of the water, the insides of the fish would slump; so one of his hybrid’s characteristics is a pot-belly. Think ‘inside-out’…

Visit 2nd year Leo Tsang’s unit 1 blog from last year for an example of what a great ‘creative development’ blog can look like; the brief was a little different then, but the expectation of what a student can produce in 5 weeks was not. Take the time to work backwards through his posts. This is what a creative project at degree level looks like…

http://ltsang.blogspot.com/2009/10/final-portrait.html

A general reminder that, alongside everything else you need to have ready for crit day, you also need to submit an offline archive of your creative development blog. There is a way of exporting your blog as PDF via Blogger – which would be ideal for this purpose. Incase you missed the original post, Alan gives details here:

And finally – now is the time to return to the brief; time and again, students fail to submit what they’ve been asked to produce – and how; usually because they haven’t looked properly at the brief, or haven’t done so since week one. Trust me on this; just take a few minutes with a highlighter pen to identify what is required, when, and how. Remember – non-submissions are dumb!